Speaker 1: You're listening to American Shadows, a production of I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio and Grim and Mild from Aaron Manky. Deborah couldn't
Speaker 1: be seen. Being found out would be worse than being shot,
Speaker 1: a calculation made in real time. As her blood began
Speaker 1: to spell, her comrades rushed to her, but as more
Speaker 1: blood and more bodies began to fall around them, she
Speaker 1: managed to slip away. Deborah secluded herself out of sight.
Speaker 1: Grabbing her knife, she parted the gash in her thigh
Speaker 1: and dug out a musket ball. The second one was
Speaker 1: too deep for her searching fingers, and it would stay
Speaker 1: there for the rest of her life, long past the
Speaker 1: end of the Revolutionary War. They say clothes can make
Speaker 1: the woman, and sometimes they can make a woman into
Speaker 1: someone else. For Deborah Sampson, this meant she could become
Speaker 1: anyone she wanted, and in seventeen eighty two, what she
Speaker 1: wanted was to become a soldier, so she became Timothy Payer.
Speaker 1: Her stint as Timothy Payer, though would be short lived.
Speaker 1: Deborah was outed shortly after enlisting in Middleborough, Massachusetts, and
Speaker 1: she was promptly discharged, But she then made a second
Speaker 1: go of it, joining rank with the Light Infantry Company
Speaker 1: of the fourth Massachusetts Regiment under the name Robert Shirtliff,
Speaker 1: and there she fell in step with the rest of
Speaker 1: the troops. She fit right in. She looked the part,
Speaker 1: and she knew how to play as a team. Deborah
Speaker 1: was from a large family, and when her father ran off,
Speaker 1: their situation turned dire, so she went to work. Deborah
Speaker 1: was eventually hired out as an indentured servant to a
Speaker 1: wealthy household, where she bullied the boys into sharing their
Speaker 1: school work with her. She later became a teacher and
Speaker 1: brought in more income through like carpentry and basket weaving.
Speaker 1: As the War for Independence raged in the distance, Deborah
Speaker 1: felt her spirit stir. She wanted to help, but there
Speaker 1: weren't many ways to contribute to the effort. As a
Speaker 1: woman that appealed to her, so she decided to go undercover.
Speaker 1: And it was there on a battlefield in Terrytown, New York,
Speaker 1: that Deborah, disguised as Robert, busied herself stitching up her wound,
Speaker 1: and once she was back on her feet, she studied herself,
Speaker 1: pulled her shoulders back, and headed to camp. The next year,
Speaker 1: Debora was reassigned to a unit in Philadelphia. A while there.
Speaker 1: It was, of all things, a fever that led to
Speaker 1: her secret being discovered, but the doctor who treated her
Speaker 1: didden out her. Instead, he sent her to his own
Speaker 1: home to be nursed by his wife and daughter, and
Speaker 1: kept her truth quiet. The war was over by September
Speaker 1: of that year. The good doctor asked her to deliver
Speaker 1: a letter to her general, and her fears would come
Speaker 1: to pass. She correctly assumed that this letter would reveal
Speaker 1: the truth about Robert Shirtliffe and Deborah Sampson. She waited
Speaker 1: for her punishment, but it never came. Instead, she received
Speaker 1: an honorable discharge, some words of advice, and enough money
Speaker 1: to get home. In eighteen o nine, she even began
Speaker 1: receiving the government pension that she was owed for her service.
Speaker 1: She lived out the rest of her life knowing that
Speaker 1: she could fully wholly take pride in who she had become,
Speaker 1: and that second musket ball it would remain entombed in
Speaker 1: her flesh, a reminder of who she had once been.
Speaker 1: I'm Lauren Vogelbaum. Welcome to American Shadows. Zola Bennett's pulse
Speaker 1: quickened as she stood before the red brick house. Eyes roving,
Speaker 1: she scanned its face, her gaze settling on the front door.
Speaker 1: She went up the front steps and wrapped her knuckles
Speaker 1: firmly on the door frame, hoping that Amy would answer quickly.
Speaker 1: The specter of an old woman appeared from slight and unassuming,
Speaker 1: with her hair piled atop her head. She smiled and
Speaker 1: swung the door open wide. New faces to the Archer
Speaker 1: Home were a frequent occurrence. As the proprietor of the
Speaker 1: rest home, Amy Archer Gilligan, made it her work to
Speaker 1: take in the old, the destitute, the infirm for a price.
Speaker 1: Of course, it was expensive to keep food on the
Speaker 1: table and the lights on, but she was providing a
Speaker 1: necessary public service to the small community of Windsor, Connecticut.
Speaker 1: Growing old is not for the faint of heart. It
Speaker 1: was even less so back in the early nineteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: when multi generational families were becoming less common as more
Speaker 1: young folks were being lured off to the big city.
Speaker 1: Many communities were con hunting the strain of how to
Speaker 1: care for their growing elderly populations. Almshouses were an abysmal option,
Speaker 1: and religious organizations could only help so much. There was
Speaker 1: a very real social void and one that Amy made
Speaker 1: it her mission to fill. Zola explained to Amy that
Speaker 1: she was newly without as a wealthy woman who had
Speaker 1: been married and kept for most of her life, she
Speaker 1: had no real practical skills, and she was lonely. She
Speaker 1: wondered if the stately Archer home would have room for
Speaker 1: another boarder. Amy naturally was beyond pleased. She ran a
Speaker 1: brisk and profitable outfit and had taken in a number
Speaker 1: of wealthy clients in the past. She loved that her
Speaker 1: reputation preceded her and brought her good business. She had
Speaker 1: been at this line of work for about ten years.
Speaker 1: She and her husband James, had rented a place in
Speaker 1: nearby Newington early in their marriage. Their landlord had been
Speaker 1: an elderly man who needed assistance, and in exchange for
Speaker 1: room and board, the young couple learned the art of caregiving.
Speaker 1: When he eventually passed away, Amy and James rented the
Speaker 1: home from his heirs and opened up sister Amy's nursing
Speaker 1: home for the elderly. There was no regulation on how
Speaker 1: these homes worked or what kind of care was provided,
Speaker 1: but Amy's reputation was sterling. They stayed there for a
Speaker 1: few years, until the Airs sold the home. Amy and
Speaker 1: James then relocated to the red brick house on Prospect Street,
Speaker 1: replete with a wrap around porch and a lush green lawn,
Speaker 1: and there they once again opened their doors to their inmates,
Speaker 1: as Amy called them. The couple drummed up business through postcards, flyers,
Speaker 1: and newspaper ads. They recruited by word of mouth, and
Speaker 1: when people came knocking, they laid out their fees. Residents
Speaker 1: had to prove their financial assets, then fork over between
Speaker 1: seven and twenty five dollars a week for care or
Speaker 1: a thousand dollars flat for the rest of their god
Speaker 1: given time on earth. The latter was often seen as
Speaker 1: a bargain for many who came by were pretty healthy.
Speaker 1: They just wanted the company that communal living could provide,
Speaker 1: and because of this, the room slowly swelled with life.
Speaker 1: Boarders took up residence, and the Archer home and family
Speaker 1: were busy. But these early happy days weren't to last.
Speaker 1: On February second of nineteen ten, James died suddenly an
Speaker 1: undiagnosed kidney ailment. Corners would later say, Amy, just thirty
Speaker 1: six years old and with a young teenage daughter, was
Speaker 1: a breath away from becoming destitute, but in a stroke
Speaker 1: of luck, James Archer had a life insurance policy taken
Speaker 1: out by his wife in previous weeks, which allowed the
Speaker 1: two remaining Archers to keep their house and maintain their business.
Speaker 1: After that, Amy played the part of the pious widow.
Speaker 1: She dressed in black, her Bible always nearby. She made
Speaker 1: generous donations to the Catholic Church, and she kept serving
Speaker 1: the most lonely people in Windsor. As Amy beckons Zola
Speaker 1: in The Young Undercover Detective, felt her skin prickle. She
Speaker 1: had heard rumors about this place and had been assigned
Speaker 1: to get to the bottom of them. She couldn't blow
Speaker 1: her cover. She was afraid that if Amy found out
Speaker 1: who she really was and something bad could happen. The
Speaker 1: house you see was the last stop for many, but
Speaker 1: for reasons most never saw coming. Life at the Archer
Speaker 1: home followed a steady rhythm, and the day would dawn
Speaker 1: with breakfast and chores and the parent Calvinist work ethic
Speaker 1: that was enforced. Despite the price Borders ostensibly paid for rest,
Speaker 1: and though many came to the home to stave off loneliness,
Speaker 1: sometimes having twenty housemaids made them year for the quiet
Speaker 1: solace of days past. Each room was spartanly decorated with
Speaker 1: a cot, a table, and a bureau. The inmates shared
Speaker 1: a community bathroom, which, as anyone who's ever lived with
Speaker 1: more than themselves knows, is a surefire way to accelerate
Speaker 1: tension in any relationship. And if anyone was ill on
Speaker 1: any given day, one Dr Howard frost King would come calling.
Speaker 1: He was also the medical examiner for the town. He
Speaker 1: often saw residents twice, once when they were ill and
Speaker 1: once when they died. Amy kept everything moving. Just three
Speaker 1: years after James passed, she remarried a fellow by the
Speaker 1: name of Michael Gilligan, a hearty man with three sons,
Speaker 1: two daughters, and a healthy bank account. Romantics might hope
Speaker 1: that Amy did this for love, but the rest of
Speaker 1: us can imagine that she did this for security. Maybe
Speaker 1: their children were happy for them, and their friends too,
Speaker 1: but their neighbors were becoming a bit more wary of
Speaker 1: the Archer home. Something it seemed just wasn't quite right.
Speaker 1: It's possible they were being paranoid. Isn't it expected that
Speaker 1: if people intend to live out their lives in a place,
Speaker 1: they'll do just that, but the neighbors couldn't help but
Speaker 1: take note of how staggering the body count was. They
Speaker 1: came one after the other in the dead of night.
Speaker 1: I'm a cob parade of stiff skin and bones that
Speaker 1: no one was supposed to see, but from which the
Speaker 1: neighbors couldn't look away. Amy, for her part, knew this
Speaker 1: was all part of doing business. Well. Some people didn't
Speaker 1: like getting their hands dirty dealing with the dying and
Speaker 1: the dead, but she didn't mind. It was the living
Speaker 1: that sometimes gave her trouble, with families inmates trying to
Speaker 1: insert themselves into her work. But this was her domain
Speaker 1: and she knew best. It wasn't a glamorous job, but
Speaker 1: it was one that she was willing to do so
Speaker 1: long as she was compensated for her efforts. Franklin Andrews,
Speaker 1: a new resident, knew he would be one of those
Speaker 1: bodies eventually. He had managed to eke out a comfortable living,
Speaker 1: but he was coming into his twilight years alone. He
Speaker 1: had two sisters who loved him mightily but struggled to
Speaker 1: care for themselves. So with his little bit of money
Speaker 1: from the sale of his family farm, he found his
Speaker 1: way to the Archer Home. Amy welcomed him with open arms.
Speaker 1: For a thousand dollars, she would give him the care
Speaker 1: his sisters couldn't provide, and he was a fairly hale fellow,
Speaker 1: maintaining his good health with morning walks and household projects.
Speaker 1: But in time his health began to falter. His sisters
Speaker 1: weren't privy to this. They didn't know that he was
Speaker 1: slipping from life, so they were helpless in pulling him back.
Speaker 1: When Franklin's sister, Nellie phoned to see if she could
Speaker 1: come by for a visit, Amy informed her that her
Speaker 1: brother was gravely ill. Just hours later he would be dead,
Speaker 1: spirited out of this world and out the back door
Speaker 1: of the house on Prospect Street. Nellie was shocked. She
Speaker 1: paid a visit to the country coroner and demanded to
Speaker 1: see Franklin's body, and when they presented her baby brother
Speaker 1: to her, she was shocked again to see that he
Speaker 1: looked great, certainly not as ill as Amy had led
Speaker 1: her to believe. If this wasn't enough to rouse suspicion,
Speaker 1: there would be one more death that would turn heads
Speaker 1: Amy's very own husband, Michael, at his end on February
Speaker 1: twenty first of nineteen fourteen. Doctor King examined him and
Speaker 1: insisted it was heart disease. Even though he had seemed
Speaker 1: so robust, his friends were left very suspicious, and none
Speaker 1: more so than Karl Gosly. Gosly, you see, was a
Speaker 1: local journalist. He knew a thing or two about obituaries
Speaker 1: and probably paid more attention to them than most. The
Speaker 1: cadence at which they came from the Archer home alarmed him.
Speaker 1: He went digging and came up with not just more obituaries,
Speaker 1: but death certificates, dozens of them. The pattern was glaring.
Speaker 1: The dead were shouting at him from beyond the veil
Speaker 1: and the print, and they gave him an idea. He
Speaker 1: grabbed his notebook and headed out to the local drug store,
Speaker 1: and there he discovered Amy had told the staff about
Speaker 1: her serious rat problem and had been in the habit
Speaker 1: of purchasing huge amounts of poison from them. Zola Bennett
Speaker 1: knew that she had to time her undercover stay just right.
Speaker 1: Too short and her mission would be undercut too long,
Speaker 1: and she might not make it out alive. She had
Speaker 1: been assigned to the case by Hugh Allcorn, the States
Speaker 1: Attorney for Hartford County. Nelly had come to him with
Speaker 1: her suspicions, but Carl Gosly's ghastly discovery at the drug
Speaker 1: store was enough impetus to get the investigation under way.
Speaker 1: The Connecticut State Police were in a race against the clock,
Speaker 1: which was really a race against Amy. The hours the
Speaker 1: residents had left on this earth were quickly ticking down.
Speaker 1: In nineteen sixteen, all Corn ordered the bodies of former
Speaker 1: Archer Home residents to be exhumed. As so not to
Speaker 1: stir the interest of the press, the work was done
Speaker 1: under the cover of night, so the dead were brought
Speaker 1: back to the surface of the earth a glow and
Speaker 1: a wash of gas light lanterns. Their organs were removed
Speaker 1: and jarred and taken away for examination. And when they
Speaker 1: were analyzed by someone other than Dr King, something interesting happened.
Speaker 1: The organs were found to be harboring startling amounts of arsenic.
Speaker 1: It became clear that at least twenty residents had been murdered.
Speaker 1: End The paper trail the dead left behind was likewise damning.
Speaker 1: Bank statements, wills, and letters revealed large transfers from residents
Speaker 1: to Amy, and by the time the spring of nineteen
Speaker 1: sixteen rolled around. All the ince was collected and the
Speaker 1: numbers were tallied. The final score, if we could call it, that,
Speaker 1: was shocking. The police arrested Amy on charges of killing
Speaker 1: at least sixty people, with forty eight of those deaths
Speaker 1: from the last five years alone. Amy was indignant she
Speaker 1: was doing the lord's work and having a trying time
Speaker 1: of it too. According to her, it was the peculiarities
Speaker 1: of old people that could account for all of this,
Speaker 1: with no wrongdoing on her side. The police and the
Speaker 1: public didn't buy it. The crowd had to admit, though,
Speaker 1: that Amy cut a striking figure in her morning blacks
Speaker 1: as she appeared for her trial in June of that year.
Speaker 1: Alcorn was out to see her hang and stabbed the deck.
Speaker 1: With best medical experts around, it took the jury less
Speaker 1: than fifteen minutes to sentence her to death. As the
Speaker 1: gavel came down. It's hard not to wonder what it
Speaker 1: felt like for her to finally beyond the raw end
Speaker 1: of the deal. M Amy didn't have to live with
Speaker 1: that psychic terror for long. She went on to appeal
Speaker 1: the sentence and received a new trial three years later.
Speaker 1: She admitted to guilt on one account of second degree murder,
Speaker 1: for which she was ferried away to the Weathersfield State
Speaker 1: Prison to begin her life sentence. Q Allcorn meanwhile went
Speaker 1: on to have quite a career after Amy Archer Gilligan.
Speaker 1: He prosecuted over fifteen thousand criminals and was stuck with
Speaker 1: a nickname the Hanging Prosecutor. The trial had been a
Speaker 1: sensation and the fallout was uncomfortable for the tiny town
Speaker 1: of Windsor, but largely the story disappeared from the public's view,
Speaker 1: that is, with one exception. Years later, on January tenth,
Speaker 1: of a curtain went up on Broadway, playwright Joseph kessl
Speaker 1: Ring was running his new dark comedy. It had gotten
Speaker 1: rave reviews and sold out every show. The story followed
Speaker 1: two elderly sisters who took in older gentleman borders, and
Speaker 1: if these ladies felt that a border was getting lonely
Speaker 1: or annoying, they gently dispatched him with a glass of
Speaker 1: arsenic laced elderberry wine between London and New York. The
Speaker 1: play would run for almost three thousand shows and was
Speaker 1: soon made into a film by Frank Capra. But on
Speaker 1: that opening night, there was someone very special in the audience.
Speaker 1: One Hugh all Corn. He had helped kessel Ring with
Speaker 1: his research, which would forever cement the memory of Amy
Speaker 1: Archer Gilligan in the public's imagination with the play Arsenic
Speaker 1: and Old Lace. Amy meanwhile left us with one last twist.
Speaker 1: She was eventually declared temporarily insane and institutionalized in an
Speaker 1: asylum in nearby Middletown. Her short tenure ended up lasting
Speaker 1: thirty eight years. And then it said that she was
Speaker 1: a model patient, sitting with her Bible or winnowing her
Speaker 1: hours away at the piano, playing funeral music to her
Speaker 1: heart's content. She also had chores to complete, like every
Speaker 1: other inmate there. Her job cooking and serving food to
Speaker 1: the staff and inmates of the entire establishment. There's more
Speaker 1: to this story. Stick around after this brief sponsor break
Speaker 1: to hear all about it. Elizabeth looked down at her
Speaker 1: sad plate. They're baked into her bread was the husk
Speaker 1: of a long dead spider. Of the things she had
Speaker 1: witnessed over the past week, this was the thing that
Speaker 1: turned her stomach. She considered it. Hungry eyes and silent
Speaker 1: mouths watched her while nurses snicker in the corner. She
Speaker 1: slipped the bread to another woman, a small act of
Speaker 1: mercy in a place so cold. It was all she
Speaker 1: could do in that moment. It would be imperative to
Speaker 1: stay the course and collect these moments. Elizabeth hoped she
Speaker 1: could keep observing and documenting what was happening around her
Speaker 1: and expose Blackwell Asylum in the newspapers for what it
Speaker 1: really was. Elizabeth had always been precocious, and she had
Speaker 1: always been a writer, but she was also a woman.
Speaker 1: Because of this, she had been relegated to the society pages,
Speaker 1: writing about debutante balls, weddings, and other goings on about town.
Speaker 1: These things were not what she considered real journalism, but
Speaker 1: she held firm to the dreams of big bylines and
Speaker 1: bigger stories, leads with gravitas that would be hers and
Speaker 1: hers alone. For the chasing this, she decided these luncheons
Speaker 1: and galas would not do so. With a resolve as
Speaker 1: steely as the New York City sky, Elizabeth had blustered
Speaker 1: her way into newspaper editor Joseph Pulitzer's office. She promised
Speaker 1: she would deliver him a major story if only given
Speaker 1: a shot. He was impressed, he was also skeptical, so
Speaker 1: Joseph decided to put her medal to the test and
Speaker 1: see if she could bluster her all the way into
Speaker 1: the asylum. Getting out, Elizabeth thought to herself, would be
Speaker 1: a bridge to cross when she got there. Elizabeth prepared
Speaker 1: herself the first step in her method acting project would
Speaker 1: be to look the part, So she became a boarder
Speaker 1: at the Perhaps on the Nose temporary home for females
Speaker 1: and began practicing her thousand yards stare. She would keep
Speaker 1: herself up all night, eyes wide. She began to talk
Speaker 1: about her missing luggage and her trip from Cuba, and
Speaker 1: started accusing other borders of being crazy. No one appreciates
Speaker 1: disruptive roommates, and the police were eventually called. Elizabeth would
Speaker 1: later write that she was worried about convincing people she
Speaker 1: was crazy enough, As she would soon find out, it
Speaker 1: really didn't take much. It was assumed that everyone who
Speaker 1: was taken to Blackwell deserved to be there, quite the
Speaker 1: opposite of the idea of being innocent until proven guilty.
Speaker 1: Right away, Elizabeth was treated as a lost cause, just
Speaker 1: another troublesome woman who needed to be handled. She soon
Speaker 1: was getting an up close look at the inhumanity only
Speaker 1: whispered about on the outside. The life the inmates led
Speaker 1: was no life at all. They were subject to beatings, chokings,
Speaker 1: and near drownings, all often delivered wholly unprovoked. They were
Speaker 1: forced to labor and to sit on hard wooden benches
Speaker 1: for fourteen hours a day. They were drugged with morphine
Speaker 1: and chloroform, with a frequency so high that many of
Speaker 1: those held there really did seem to lose their minds.
Speaker 1: In the late eighteen hundreds, it was easy to commit
Speaker 1: someone or becomemitted yourself to an asylum. Elizabeth met women
Speaker 1: who had been sick but couldn't afford medical care, and
Speaker 1: others who were considered burdensome by their families and sent away.
Speaker 1: Others still were immigrants who had been picked up by
Speaker 1: law enforcement for one reason or another. These were women
Speaker 1: society wished to forget, wished to disappear behind lock and key,
Speaker 1: to be kept quiet and out of sight. After ten days,
Speaker 1: Joseph Pulitzer sprung Elizabeth the women she had met there, well,
Speaker 1: they'd hardly be so lucky. Two days later, she published
Speaker 1: her first report under the pen name Nellie Bligh. When
Speaker 1: the public realized the horrible extent of this truth, they
Speaker 1: were aghast. The article was explosive, sending shock waves throughout
Speaker 1: the country. The city was deeply embarrassed. By the time
Speaker 1: officials went to investigate the asylum, it was clear the
Speaker 1: staff had been hard at work cleaning up the building
Speaker 1: was freshly paid, unted. There is better food and more
Speaker 1: adequate sleeping quarters, and everyone Elizabeth had spoken to and
Speaker 1: named in the article it seems had disappeared. American Shadows
Speaker 1: is hosted by Lauren Vogelbaum. This episode was written by
Speaker 1: Robin Minater, researched by Ali Steed, and produced by Miranda
Speaker 1: Hawkins and Trevor Young, with executive producers Aaron Manky, Alex Williams,
Speaker 1: and Matt Frederick. To learn more about the show, visit
Speaker 1: grimmin mild dot com. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you get your podcasts.